Wow! Here we go into our year EIGHT of The MN Movie Man. I can’t believe it!

Below I’ve compiled my list of the best and worst of 2018. As is typically the case, by the time it came to make this list things became a bit of a jumble and I decided to choose the movies that I had the strongest reaction to when I saw them. I don’t revisit movies often but anything in the Top 5 are films that I’d add to my collection. I also cheated a little bit…but it’s my blog so I can do what I want 🙂

As always, I’ve appreciated your feedback, your patronage, and your general presence in my blog. Even if you read this everyday but have never commented or made contact I can still tell you’ve been here and that means a lot.

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Best Wishes to you and yours for a most Happy New Year!

~Joe (The MN Movie Man)

5. A Quiet Place – John Krasinski always felt like he’d best be remembered for playing Jim on NBC’s The Office but after writing/directing this spine-chilling genre film I’d be willing to bet they’ll also mention A Quiet Place in a list of his major accomplishments. Turning a horror film on its ear and making it a metaphor about parenting was a smart move in keeping things in unfamiliar territory to audiences. With his wife in the leading role and two dynamite child actors as their children, Krasinksi assembled a perfect roster across the board. It was scary, it was emotional, and it was fantastically well made with a high re-watchability factor. Super.

4. A Star is Born (2018) – After three previous versions of A Star is Born the question everyone wanted to know was if the story of a fading rock star falling in love with a pop star as she rises to fame would work in a modern setting. Coupled with a stellar soundtrack and the kind of movie star chemistry you rarely see in these days, Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut was a knockout. The first hour is better than most entire films released in 2018 and even if the second half can’t quite reach those same heights the work done by Lady Gaga and Cooper (not to mention Sam Elliott) is remarkable. It’s even better on repeat viewings.

3. If Beale Street Could Talk – when the screening of this one was over I wasn’t quite sure what I thought about it, it’s one that will stick to your bones for many days to come. In the days and weeks that have followed since I saw this Barry Jenkins adaptation of James Baldwin’s short novel, I’ve found it hard to get it out of my mind or shake it’s unforgettable imagery. The performances are phenomenal and haunting – the way Jenkins has many of the actors deliver their lines directly to camera has a chilling effect you won’t soon forget. A lyrical and beautifully constructed work of art.

2. Love Simon / Crazy Rich Asians – hooray for the return of the romantic comedy! 2018 had two shining examples of excellent romantic comedies and I couldn’t be happier to have them on my best of the year list. Though it may teeter on the side of comedic drama, Love Simon is a sweet tale of a high schooler coming to terms with his sexuality and learning to be OK with it. Crazy Rich Asians is the mega hit that heralded the return of the outright rom-com to cinemas that wasn’t afraid to be big and bold. Often with these movies the main characters get overshadowed by showier supporting characters and it’s true that both of these offerings have memorable supporting players – but the difference is that the lead characters are written well enough that they remain as interesting as everyone else on screen. More of these movies, please and thank you!

1. The Favourite – To be honest, I’m surprised this one found its way to the top of my list, but in looking at the movies I saw last year none struck the same clarion chord of expertise in quite the way that The Favourite did. It’s absolutely not going to be everyone’s cup of English Breakfast tea but for those that are willing to tilt their head slightly to the side and see things askew, they’ll get a kick of this bawdy trip to Queen Anne’s court. Everything about the production is sublime, from the costumes to the set dressings all the way up to the leading performances of a trio of excellent ladies. I still think Rachel Weisz gave one of my favorite performances of the year in a very tricky role that could have gone into high camp.

5. Book Club – a movie featuring talented actors Jane Fonda, Mary Steenburgen, Candice Bergen, and Diane Keaton should be smart, finely tuned, and relevant. Book Club is none of these things. A lame-brained comedy that feels like it came out 20 years too late puts the four women in numerous embarrassing situations and asks them to recite godawful dialogue. I took my mom to see this on Mother’s Day and felt like I had to ask for a do over the next weekend.

4. The Happytime Murders – I’ll admit it: I laughed at this movie…because there are a few jokes so repulsively blunt that you can’t help but stammer out a guffaw at what you just heard a blue felt puppet say to similarly pilling creation from the son of Jim Henson. Having seen the foul-mouthed musical Avenue Q on Broadway, which gleefully advertises “Full Puppet Nudity” I get that there are jokes to be made as a commentary but the difference between that Tony winning show and this future Razzie winner, is that this movie has no creative bone in its body. It’s just a series of sex jokes that are only funny because a puppet is saying them.

3. Breaking In – I’ve been a fan of Gabrielle Union for a while now and she deserves better than bargain-basement projects like Breaking In. A basic cable style movie that somehow was picked up by a major studio and released to unsuspecting audiences paying full price, this was a brainless effort from all that touted a poster image of Union looking ready to kick butt but instead featured her as a character that made a series of totally idiotic moves. Worst of all was Breaking In’s arrival in the midst of the #TimesUp movement because it features horrific treatment of women and one totally unnecessary death that I’m guessing will be enough for some viewers to turn it off when watching.

2. Holmes & Watson / Tag – I’m including Holmes & Watson and Tag together on this list because both feature stupid guys doing stupid things. Holmes & Watson is yet another opportunity for Will Ferrell to cash a check for doing the same old schtick while Tag is an exhausting exercise in toxic masculinity run amok. Chuck both of these in the trash bin and call it a day.

1. Welcome to Marwen – It’s been a few weeks since I’ve seen Welcome to Marwen and I’m still seething mad at how bad it was. Director Robert Zemeckis wastes a great cast in his misguided exercise bringing the documentary Marwencol to life as a feature film. What made sense in a documentary setting completely fails to translate to a narrative feature and audiences are left to white-knuckle it through very disconcerting scenes of exploitation of women and those suffering from mental health issues. Universal Pictures should be ashamed of themselves for distributing this one. Total garbage.

Most Misunderstood: Suspiria – Oh boy this was a divisive movie! Fans of Dario Argento’s classic original were aghast at what director Luca Guadagnino did to the relatively simple outline of the original. I, for one, was happy to see that Guadagnino dug a little deeper than Argento did and brought out even darker elements to an already pitch black tale of witchcraft running rampant at a Germany dance academy. This was a long movie with several horrifying sequences but I found it a thrilling and exciting undertaking. More risks like this need to be taken, even if they don’t fully succeed or, in this case, make any money.Honorable Mention: The Meg

Joe’s Humble Pie Award of 2018 (movies that turned out differently than I expected going in): Game Night– I fully expected Game Night to be another one of Jason Bateman’s smug comedies with him rolling his eyes and having some snarky comment at every turn. Actually, there’s a lot of that going on here but it works to Bateman’s advantage because it fits in perfectly with the tone of the film. Buoyed by a strong supporting cast, including Rachel McAdams in a delightful turn and Jesse Plemons as a deadpan dud, and some genuine twists that keep the film from getting too far ahead of its audience, this was a more than pleasant surprise. Several points off for spoiling one of the best jokes in the trailer, though. Tsk Tsk.Honorable Mention: Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

Click HERE for a full listing of films seen in 2018Total Movies Seen in the Theater: 128Total Movies Seen at Home: 184Grand Total for 2018 (not counting films seen multiple times): 309Where I Saw the Most Movies – AMC Southdale (35!)

Review: There was a time in the early ‘90s when a movie like Breaking In would have gotten a pass as a mediocre mid-level film that might not be fully filling but was a harmless way to spend 88 minutes. Times have changed. Though it arrives with a striking marketing campaign promising “Payback is a Mother” and wants to position itself as a worthy alternative to blockbuster fare like Avengers: Infinity War, Breaking In is a bewildering exercise in all-around clueless filmmaking.

Things start rough as the filmmakers resort to one of the oldest gotcha moments in moviemaking for a brief prologue that introduces and dispatches of a character we never learn much about. Flash forward to Shaun (Gabrielle Union) and her two children Jazz (Ajiona Alexus) and Glover (Seth Carr) traveling to Shaun’s childhood estate to prepare it for sale. With the recent passing of her father, it’s hinted early on there were unresolved issues Shaun is attempting to put to bed once and for all. Arriving at a house equipped with a state of the art security system, the family isn’t there long before the kids are locked inside with a trio of burglars hunting for a money-stocked safe and Shaun has to, you guessed it, break in. What follows is an absurd game of cat-and-mouse that finds Shaun alternately trying to get into the house and then (spoiler alert) trying to get back out.

Working from a flimsy story idea from Jamie Primak Sullivan, screenwriter Ryan Engle (Rampage, The Commuter, Non-Stop) doesn’t have many creative places to go and the result is an exceedingly dull thriller. Though some rules about the security system are established early on, they seem to fly out the door as fast as the toy drone Glover brought along which figures into a few key jump scares. It’s also never clear what the thugs (including Richard Cabral and Levi Meaden, led by the charmless Billy Burke, Lights Out) are doing there in the first place or how much they were involved with the death of Shaun’s father. Attentive listeners might catch a hackneyed roundabout explanation that hints Shaun’s father was a criminal but without any more material to fill these gaps the whole plot stands on incredibly shaky ground.

Director James McTeigue (The Raven) first came to Hollywood with the stylish V for Vendetta but this is grab the money and run filmmaking at its worst. Dimly lit scenes, indistinguishable action sequences, and a general feeling of not knowing where anyone is speaks to the quality of the work with the whole thing feeling like a made-for-Netflix film that lucked out with a theatrical release. Clearly edited down to a PG-13 from an R (how many hardened criminals routinely use ‘frickin’ in their vocabulary?) even the dénouement of some characters are hard to decipher because the camera doesn’t provide any establishing shots or connectivity.

I was honestly looking forward to this mainly because I’m a fan of Union, very much finding her an underrated talent that has yet to latch on to a golden opportunity. While Union tries her best, she’s fighting against a movie that doesn’t have any stamina or guts – so her performance often comes off as out of tune with the rest of the actors and situations. Alexus has an uncanny resemblance to Union and a similar commitment to this dreck, their mother-daughter relationship was the only thing believable in the whole film.

Intentional or not, Cabral (Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones) and Meaden drew major laughs from the audience with their overly earnest performances as polar opposites on the threat scale. With his intense stare and crooked nose, Cabral is intimidating without even speaking while Meaden’s platinum blonde burnout has a doofus quality that humanized him more than Engle’s eye-rolling dialogue ever could. Burke never seems to decide on how to play his big baddie role – one moment he’s the epitome of calm cool sophistication and then next he’s a low-rent gun for hire.

Maybe the worst thing about the movie is how out of touch it feels in this era of #MeToo and similar social causes. There’s two seriously off-color homophobic jokes and a gross misogyny toward Union, Alexus, and poor Christa Miller who turns up halfway through the movie for a sorrowful (and totally unnecessary) cameo. Even more, Union’s character never truly feels like she’s granted the opportunity to take control of the situation. She’s easily caught whenever she tries to run away and always manages to take several hits to the face before escaping again. As a producer of the movie, I can’t help but wonder what Union was thinking letting some of these events play out like they did.

A poor answer to the call for more female empowerment in movies, Breaking In is one you’ll want to get out of as fast as possible.